Old Letters

Going through an old box with items saved from my younger days.

Letters, newspaper clippings, report cards, basketball programs, etc..... 

Looking for correspondence with a girl I got to know in the summer of 1974.

We met while working a summer job for the state parks at the Oregon Coast.

We shared a love for music. She played saxophone and loved the music of Deodato.

I was into the music of Jackson Browne, Neil Young, James Taylor .... the 70's Singer/Songwriters.

Through high school, I was into sports and terrified of girls but somehow, through the seemingly eternally foggy and drizzly coastal air, we connected.

(Sidenote: All these years later and I'm still mostly terrified of girls. 😀)

I looked forward to seeing her every day that summer.

Summer ended and we each went off to different colleges .... freshman year for both of us.

By then, I had fallen in love with her. Though no one knew.

My uncle and aunt who I was living with for those two and a half months, may have suspected.

We exchanged letters for a while, into the spring of 1975. 

But then, for whatever reason, we both faded from each other's world.

She still comes to mind occasionally. 

Looking at these fifty-year-old letters ..... fifty? Is that possible?

There were invitations to come visit at her dorm, twenty miles away.

She offered that she'd be in my hometown on a certain weekend and would call me. 

The band she was in had big plans. 

She joked that they were going to share a gig with a stripper .... she wasn't too crazy about that but hey, it was eighty bucks and that was big money for a teenager in 1974.

She had all these great hopes and at that point, I hadn't a clue what I wanted from life.

I don't recall why but we never did get together.

Then the letters stopped, and I never heard from her again.

Do I need to point out that there was no social media, no cell phones, no texting or DM's then.

Maybe we could have kept the correspondence going.

I've wondered over the years, what path she took in life?

And if she would remember me?

"It's a little bit funny" .... apologies to Elton John ..... but reading these letters last night, I began hurting from the feeling of knowing now, she was soon going to fade away from my world.

..... "this feeling inside, I'm not one of those who can easily hide."

I'm sure that I hurt a little over all this back when it was taking place, live.

But in the years since, I've never thought too deeply about it, never really hurt over it any longer until the last two days.

For me, there's a sense of sadness in these letters that I can feel while reading and remembering.

Maybe it's partly because I'm struggling to form an image of her in my mind.

Like if she looked exactly the same today as she did back then, I might not recognize her if we crossed paths.

And I struggle with the fact that it's been fifty years.

The image may be blurry but the emotions still feel fresh and recent.

And I want to explain that better but that's the best I can do. 

I'd like to think that I would have been excited to share this photo with her back then. I still recall the excitement of this sunrise moment. How I fumbled about with my camera while trying to get into a position to capture what I was seeing.